


Knowing the Love We'll Miss

by bold_seer



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Existential Crisis, F/M, Ficlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 10:17:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8368537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bold_seer/pseuds/bold_seer
Summary: “Why is she so violent?”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Melody_Jade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melody_Jade/gifts).



Mal hates him. Despises Arthur with a fervour that should frighten her, because some part of her still remembers – she didn’t always. But that was a lifetime ago, and a different Arthur. Not this pathetic shadow, trailing behind Dom, holding onto him, holding Dom onto his reality. If he really is _Arthur_ , he’s as deluded as Dom. Hurting him is inevitable and means nothing, isn’t even real. But she wants someone to hurt.

Arthur’s body falls to the ground, ghostlike and empty, as disturbing as it is familiar.

Disappears a moment later. Then the layer collapses, and she goes with the flood, sinking into deeper and darker depths. Hidden away, out of sight, a little secret you keep locked in a treasure box, so that it won’t escape and wreak havoc upon your world.

...

Mal hates her. Wandering into her world with all the wonder of a wide-eyed child.

(“Why is she so violent?” Ariadne asks Arthur later, massaging her own neck.

“It’s not Mal,” he tries to explain. Not as he remembers her, loving and good, a _dream_. Not as he remembers Dom and Mal, the two of them perfectly in love. “It’s the idea of his wife, his subconscious representation of her.”

Ariadne’s eyes are open, inquisitive. “So why would he feel that way about her?”

Or perhaps, why would Mal feel that way about Cobb? Or him, or Ariadne? This twisted creature of grief, condemned to make-believe and déjà vu for as long as she exists. If there is any essence left of Mal Cobb in this _Mal_ , the ghost in the machine. The bad parts that no one wanted to see, now twisted beyond recognition; how she lashes out in jealousy towards anyone around Cobb.) 

But Ariadne is nobody. Could be anybody, any onlooker, and doesn’t belong here or with anyone. She isn’t a lover, one half of a whole. Not like Mal, forever tied to her husband.

...

Pain, pain is in the mind, like wrath and guilt, lingers on. Feeds on her and fuels her, until she -

_\- just a shade of my real wife._

Ceases.


End file.
